


Little Fire-Light

by Coyote Grins (Inksinger), Inksinger



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Dalaran, Depression, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'll bite your damned ankles off, Light Angst, Listen sometimes you have a dream about Kael'thas giving you hot chocolate and a fic happens alright, Original Character-centric, Self-Insert, Social Anxiety, don't look at me like that, swear on me mum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Coyote%20Grins, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Inksinger
Summary: She hadn'twantedto hurt the man. Really, honestly, she hadn't. She'd only meant to kick at him. That's all she'd been planning to do when she whirled about that last time.She'd never meant to burn him so badly - but no one else at home was willing to trust her anymore.





	1. Downhill

It was an accident.

Tirnisse hadn't _wanted_ to hurt the man. Really, honestly, she hadn't. He'd just been so drunk, and it had been so dark, and she had wanted so badly for him to just _stop touching her._

She'd only meant to kick at him. That's all she'd been planning to do when she whirled about that last time - just kick him, just once, just in the shin or something. She hadn't meant… she'd never thought…

She wasn't a mage. She didn't have any relatives she knew of who were. She'd never shown any signs before; how could she have known what the choking, gasping, dizzying feeling had meant? She'd had… episodes, before. Panics. It had felt just like those. How could she have known what was coming?

She wasn't a mage. Mages were liars and sneak-thieves, traitors to their own nature, meddlers in affairs not meant for mortals. That wasn't her.

It wasn't her.

_It wasn't._

(Sweet Light, she'd panicked like this before, and so often around friends and relatives. How many of them could have been hurt? Was it really panic, or just a signal of something worse coming?)

She wasn't a mage. She wasn't.

_(How many times had she almost attacked her own parents?)_

She had helped the poor man drag himself to a healer. She'd turned herself in for what she'd done. She'd shaken and wept until her throat went raw and never, never stopped apologizing even as she was hauled into the little shack that served as the local court.

No one would listen to her. She was tried for attempted murder, and only just avoided serving time in the nearest prison because she promised instead to leave the province altogether unless and until she learned to control her own magic.

( _Magic I never knew I had!_ she'd wailed during the trial. The judge - a man who had been a beloved friend and role model when she was a child - had looked at her with such betrayal in his eyes that she'd had to be escorted from the court until her sobbing had subsided. People she knew were there in court, and acted like she'd lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite - all but her family had flinched away as she passed.)

She wasn't a mage.

(Magic was not looked kindly upon in her hamlet. She learned the hard way that not even accidental magic, awakened by the need to protect oneself, was easily forgiven.)

She was not a mage - but she was filled with magic like a pouch full of poison and all the seams were ripping.

And she didn't know how to stitch them back up again.

She was not a mage - and look what had happened.

(Magic did not belong on honest soil.)

She had heard of Dalaran. City of magi and magic. She had been left to apply for an education at the school there, and - after reviewing the details of her trial - and been accepted “for the good of the citizenry.”

Tirnisse was no dumb hick. She knew that was the polite way to reiterate what the court had already ruled: She was a menace to society.

They would hate her in Dalaran even more intensely than they hated her here.

Her mother was sympathetic, at least. Her father tried to be, but… it was her father. Emotions in general were difficult things for him to express (though she knew by now how to see the hurt in his eyes, how to hear the anxiety and loneliness already setting into his words.)

A mage came for her three days after her trial. Tirnisse trembled as the boy (and he _was_ a boy, young enough to have been her brother) spoke alien words that ripped a hole in the air before her.

“Right then,” the boy said, as calmly as though he hadn't just torn the fabric of reality. “Miss Fay Rederric?”

Her parents had started at that; it had only been Tirnisse nodding and stepping forward without hesitation that kept them quiet.

She hoped they would understand why she had given the administrators of the Dalaran school a false name - or else that they would guess at an alternate explanation that didn't hurt their feelings. She would have to find a way to tell them in secret that she hadn't wanted any shame she earned in Dalaran to reach them here at home. A false surname would protect them from that.

And “Fay” would protect herself from any well-bred magi who might take offense to a farm girl with so dignified a name as Tirnisse. She had hidden her mother's real name, as well - rather than Alcatirisse, when asked who her parents were, Fay had named her mother Lilly. She had done a good enough job stammering and shaking and falling into the coarsest slang she could manage that the administrator who had spoken with her had taken her at her word, smiling and gently remarking that it was always lovely to deal with simple folk from simple upbringings.

She'd ignored the insult. It wouldn't be the last of them, and it had helped her skate through her application on a half-course of lies.

Her departure wasn't a secret thing; gossip and the weight of her crime had made that impossible. By the time she was finished hugging her parents and gathering up her single bag of clothes and personal items (hair brush, a year's worth of willow tea, a small carving her father had given her when she was small, a book gifted to her by her mother just the year before, supplies not fit to be mentioned but essential for a young woman to carry), the entire village had gathered to watch their latest - maybe deadliest - menace leave.

And there, at the front of the crowd, was the man responsible for all this, bald now and hideously scarred for the rest of his life because he'd been a drunken oaf, and she had been afraid of him.

Tirnisse turned away and approached the portal to Dalaran before anyone could see the tears welling up in her eyes.

She hadn't meant to burn him so badly.

The portal made its own wind, and she could smell perfumes and foods she had no names for as she hesitated before it. Would it hurt? Could she fall out of it before she reached Dalaran? What if something went wrong before she reached the other side, and she was trapped in some horrific void forever? What if--?

“Go on,” the Dalaran mage urged her. “It's just like stepping through a doorway.” His voice was gentle, and she appreciated that, even if it did make her feel small and weak. She needed a little gentleness just then.

Tirnisse Collingwood squeezed her eyes shut, clutched her luggage closer to her, and stepped through the portal.


	2. City of Magi

There was a great sound like rushing wind over the plain, and for an uncomfortable moment she felt as though a hand had closed around her innards and was using them to pull her along. She gritted her teeth against a swell of nausea and took another step.

Fay Rederric felt her foot touch down on solid ground, and opened her eyes to a large room with a polished wood floor, smooth, gently curved walls the color of fresh milk, and glass lamps that floated and burned with white flames so bright they hurt to look at directly. Fine rugs lay across the floor; vivid tapestries and paintings hung on the walls between massive bookshelves. This one room alone was more gracefully built and more finely furnished than anything she had ever seen before - even the vaunted courthouse.

Of course… she was from a little farming village. She supposed a lot of things in Dalaran were going to be more lavish than she was used to.

She wasn't the only person here. Others her age - some a little younger, some a little older, most of them human - milled about the room, examining paintings and bookshelves or talking in small knots. All of these people seemed excited to be here. Happy, if visibly nervous in some cases--

There was a bell-like laugh, and Fay looked around for the source of it.

She nearly dropped her bag when she saw them: Four people, tall and lithe, their skins a range of color from one sun-bleached ivory girl to a young man with skin like the warm, tawny sand around the lake Fay’s village sat beside. Two were cornsilk-blonde; one young man wore his hair in a topknot that spilled down behind him like a river of white fire, while the lone female of the group kept hers in a bob so neatly cut and kept it almost seemed to have been sculpted from white marble. Another boy had dark brown hair gathered back into a loose horsetail, and the fourth - the tawny-skinned man - had short, spiked hair the color of blood.

Their ears were long and tapered like the blades of knives, and their eyes all gleamed like sky-blue stars even in spite of the brilliant lighting they all stood under. All four wore fabrics Fay wasn't even sure the nobility of her province could afford, all in shades of blue and violet that seemed almost iridescent as they moved fluidly about.

Fay had never seen a high elf before. She looked quickly down at her work-worn breeches and tunic, saw the split ends of her curly, unruly mane of mouse-brown hair and the faint scars of cat and chicken scratches on her arms and hands, and felt small and dirty in their shadows.

There was a quiet commotion on the opposite end of the room - the sound of people startling slightly and moving about, overlapped with the sound of rushing wind and what sounded like the chiming of far-off bells - and Fay looked to the distraction, eager to put the high elves and their lack of belly fluff out of her mind for a little while.

She saw tapered ear-tips and the top of a golden head of hair over the crowd gathering near the front of the room. The newcomer addressed the students nearest to him in a low, melodic voice, and although she couldn't make out any words Fay almost felt calmed listening to him.

Well, so much for that, then.

The foursome of elvish students brushed past Fay, drawing nearer to the edge of the gathering. They moved so gracefully as they went that they almost seemed to float rather than walk.

Fay made to step aside and give the elves more room - only to freeze in place as the female reached out and, quick as a snake strike, gently but firmly snagged her hand and brought it up to her face as though to kiss it.

There was no kiss, though. Instead the woman hovered an inch or two over Fay's hand and…

“Uhm,” Fay said timidly. “Are… Are you… sniffing my hand?”

The woman held up her free hand in a halting gesture, and Fay obediently shut up and tried not to fidget too much as the woman took another dainty whiff and tilted her head. Behind her, the three male elves looked on, looking amused and only a little bit as confused as Fay felt. None of them offered an explanation for their friend's odd behavior.

Please stop, Fay silently begged the woman. She could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on her; they scorched into her like the heat of a branding iron fresh off the coals. The other students must be watching them, must be staring at Fay especially - she wasn’t even through her first day yet and already she knew there would be gossip and teasing…

Finally, finally the woman let her go and straightened, eyeing her with open curiosity as Fay snatched her hand back and retreated a half-step.

The red-haired male stepped around between the two of them, so fluid and casual in his movement that Fay almost didn't realize he was trying to put her more at ease until he smiled apologetically down at her.

“Apologies,” he said. His voice was warm but not as smooth as she had expected it to be. It made her think of warm ale and fireside songs, when all the gossip held that any elvish voice should sound like bells and soft winds over flowering moors. It sounded… wrong, for an elf. More suited to a handsome human man than this almost feminine elf.

“I-It’s fine,” Fay stammered, realizing with a burning flush that she'd been staring a beat or two longer than she should.

The elf’s smile grew warmer and wider. Behind him, Fay caught his female friend raising her hand to hide a grin, and heard the other two men in the group chuckle quietly.

Tragically, no great chasm opened up beneath Fay just at that moment. Wishing for it apparently didn't count as casting a spell to cause it, because she remained painfully, humiliatingly, firmly rooted in front of the elves despite her very loud mental protesting.

“It's just that you smell so much like magic,” the female elf said, lowering her hand until it hovered near her chin. “I thought you might be the source, and - so you are!”

She… _smelled_ like magic? Elves could smell magic?

The whole embarrassing situation might have dragged on from there, but for once luck seemed to be with Fay - of a certain sort, at least. From the front of the room, someone cleared his throat - daintily so, for a man, but not so much so that it was anything like the clipped little _‘hem-hems_ she'd heard from the little old ladies back home. He sounded more patient than the little old ladies, too - but not by very much.

“If I could have _everyone's_ attention, please.” It was the newcomer who spoke; Fay looked up, and enough of the students in front of her turned to look back at the distraction she'd helped create that she was able to get a decent look at the man.

His eyes burned a brilliant cerulean blue. They arrested her attention even more than the eyes of the other elves had done - so much so that she almost wound up staring again. The only reason she didn't was that he smiled back at her almost indulgently, as if she was gawking and he was used to such a reaction.

Fay felt herself go scarlet with shame and ducked her head again.

He was regal. She knew it down in her bones. She didn't know _him,_ didn't know who exactly he was, but she knew royalty when she laid eyes on it and this one _reeked_ with it. He looked much too young to be a king, though, even for an elf.

Maybe a prince?

“Now then,” the princely elf said, and he spread his hands out in a grand, probably welcoming gesture that reminded Fay a bit of a child asking for a hug. “I welcome you, new students, to the great city of Dalaran - to the greatest center of magic and magical study in all of Azeroth!” He paused then, and Fay thought he chuckled softly before he added, “Outside of Quel'Thalas, at least.”

A few scattered chuckles sounded around the room. Fay didn't understand what was so funny, but managed a quiet, nervous little giggle of her own all the same. She'd already drawn more than enough attention to herself today.

“Now, no doubt some of you recognize me already,” the speaker continued, and he cast an almost fatherly smile at the elves standing with Fay, “but for those of you who don't, I believe an introduction is in order. I am Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider, heir to the throne of Quel'Thalas.”

 _Called it._ Sweet Light, she'd really gawked at royalty, after all. Fay tried to force down the urge to cringe as Prince Kael'thas continued to speak.

“Of course, here in Dalaran, I am simply an archmage. I can claim no more privilege or sway over the city or its school than any of my fellows - so, please,” he said, and Fay shrank back and cursed herself for it as his gaze fell on her again, “don't feel as though you must treat me as a prince, here. I am as much a citizen of Dalaran as the rest of you. I've simply been here a bit longer than the rest of you.”

Fay had the distinct impression that “a bit” for an elf was somewhere between five and eighty years for a human.

She also thought she smelled a trap in the way he seemed to assume so much humility. If he didn't want or expect to be treated like royalty here, why introduce himself as a prince? Why not let that be something that simply came up after the fact? No, to Fay it felt like that had been politics - his way of pretending to be an everyman so the newcomers would all like him and trust him more readily. To what end, she couldn't say, but she also didn't think she ever wanted to understand the machinations of politicians. Not even handsome, gentle-seeming ones.

Still the prince spoke, his tone thankfully becoming more businesslike now that his introduction was done: “I'm sure you're all quite eager to begin your education, but I'm afraid there are a few…”

He struggled for words. The slight gesturing of his hands - as though he weighed two phrases like physical objects between them - struck Fay as phony, another subtle trick to make everyone more comfortable with him.

It still worked. Her shoulders relaxed, and only now did she realize that they'd been tensed at all. He couldn't be all bad if he was willing to look a fool to put others at ease, right? Just… politician-bad.

There were worse things.

“Well.” Prince Kael'thas brought his haves together in a brisk motion, and Fay's back straightened in response. That read like the claps her old sitter used to use to get her attention. “There are a few ground rules to be explained.”

 _Laws._ Fay's nose wrinkled slightly. Why not just call them what they were? An archmage was explaining it, and they hadn't met any of their teachers yet. It had to be city laws.

“Firstly - and I cannot stress the importance of this enough,” the prince added, “the casting of offensive or otherwise volatile magic is _strictly forbidden_ beyond the designated practice areas within the school's grounds. It is unlikely you will learn many such spells so early into your education; however, it is equally unlikely that any of you will not do a bit of studying on your own and decide to practice some exciting bit of magic you've discovered in a library book or seen practiced by the more advanced students here.”

His eyebrows went up until his expression turned the tiniest bit conspiratorial, and more than half of the students gathered giggled in response.

“Silver-tongue,” Fay murmured, unable to help herself. The giggling seemed to cover her; Prince Kael'thas didn't look her direction.

There was an ungainly snort at her side, though, and the sound of bell-toned chucking after that, and Fay's face went beet red as she realized she'd been heard after all.

“We were all young and starry-eyed, once,” the prince was continuing. “Even I was a mere student, years and years before any of you were born. I and my fellow magi are resigned to the curiosity of the young - only keep your mischief safely contained, for all our sakes.

“In the same vein,” he continued, “you are all strongly discouraged from practicing any transformative spells on anyone - or any _thing_ \- without explicit permission from all involved parties. I know it can be tempting to turn a rival into a toad for a few hours, but such invasive magic comes with serious risks, not the least of which is the chance that the spell may go wrong and result in serious bodily injury.” He paused, letting that sink in for everyone.

“Lastly, teleportation spells are forbidden within city limits, and there are wards in place to prevent them outright on the campus grounds. The last thing we need is for anyone to teleport in, say, a flock of wild plainstriders as a prank.”

More laughter. Everybody else seemed totally taken in by this pretty elf-prince. Fay couldn't see past the expensive beige-and-purple robes he wore with the shiny gold trim about the hems, or soft black velvet boots that peeked out from beneath those robes, or the gold jewelry adorning his hands and neck. She hadn't seen any other archmagi yet, and certainly she'd only seen five elves in all her life so far, but somehow she felt he was overdressed - and as easily as he carried himself and as naturally as his adornments seemed to rest on him, she was willing to wager he'd done it on purpose.

“I do believe that covers everything on my end,” Kael'thas said when the laughter died down. “Now, before any of you burst with excitement, I think I'll hand you over to your provost.”

Fay started at that. Provost? She knew what a provost was; that was the title of the man in charge of all the peacekeepers throughout Fay's canton, the man to whom every captain from every hamlet and town answered to.

Why were they going to a provost? What had they done wrong? Was he going to look through their records one by one and make sure no one had lied to get in?

Oh, Light, that was it. He was going to know she'd lied - use some bit of magic to sniff out every last falsehood in her application and records and throw her in jail back home after expelling her from the school before she could ever begin her studies. How stiff was the penalty for lying to get into the college at Dalaran? Was there a magical jail here, with beasts and wizards and horrid spells for pain and anguish and darkness and--?

Her throat clenched around itself, shrinking in, swelling up until she wheezed audibly. Too loud, she was too loud, everyone could hear her, they had to, the wheezing was like a high, frantic wind, pitched and ragged and her legs were trembling and she wanted to lay down and run away and puke and cry and she couldn't do any of that because she couldn't _breathe--_

There was a hand at her back and she flinched like a sow from the iron and--

And--

And...

Calm washed through her, trickling down into her skin like cool, gentle little rivulets through parched soil, then billowing outward like dye in water. Her throat relaxed, and she gulped at the open air through a soft cloth somebody held pressed against her mouth. It muffled the gasp and the little whimper that followed it.

A few stray tears rolled down her cheeks and were promptly wiped away by a gentle, delicate hand. Somebody murmured to her, too softly for her to catch the words - but just loudly enough for her to hear the soothing tone of them over her own heart thundering in her ears.

The calm feeling spread, and slowly, the black haze around her vision cleared away. The room brightened back up; the other students came back into view, and the sound of Prince Kael'thas’ voice returned as her heart finally fell quiet again.

“Welcome again to Dalaran, young ones. Study well - and make us all proud.”

The room burst into applause, and Fay took advantage of the noise to drag at another lungful of air. This time the cloth was taken away from her mouth; she saw a flash of white before it was tucked away in the breast pocket of one of her helpers and realized it must have been a handkerchief.

“Will you be alright from here?”

Fay looked up and found herself staring at one of the elvish students, the man with the long, dark hair. His brow was furrowed - in concern, though, and not contempt. He leaned back to give her more room, and the hand at her back shifted with him. He'd been the one to calm her down, then.

“I think I'm okay,” Fay breathed. Her throat still felt swollen - not to anywhere near the extent it had moments before, but enough all the same that she was wary of trying too hard to speak above a stage whisper.

“He meant headmaster, dear,” the lady elf said. Her smile was kind when Fay turned to look at her. “You know - the woman who runs the College of Dalaran. Her official title is provost.”

Headmaster? Provost could mean the same thing as headmaster?

...She wasn't in trouble?

Fay looked up, past the crowd of students as their clapping died down. Prince Kael'thas was still there, waiting for something - and he must have felt her staring, because he turned and caught her eye with another patronizing little smile before he addressed the students once more.

“Please give your attention over to Provost Adrianne Mayweather,” he said. His smile was wide, and his voice was warm and radiantly affectionate, and he _almost_ struck Fay as being genuine this time.

Almost.

But then she saw the glint of a gold cuff along the edge of one of his long ears as he turned to address someone beside him. Couldn't be that genuine, then - not all bedecked as he was.

Another mage stepped forward as Prince Kael'thas ended his private conversation and teleported from the room. This new speaker was a human woman; Fay put her at forty years, maybe fifty, with dark, wavy, cool-toned brown hair that grew a little past her shoulders. This woman wore robes of similar quality to the prince's - but not nearly so grand, because her clothes didn't have the gold filigree ( _filigree,_ that was the word) that Kael'thas’ had. She also didn't glitter with nearly the same amount of jewelry.

“Welcome, everyone,” she began. “I am Provost Mayweather--”

Fay was torn away from the woman's speech by a pair of gentle hands on her arm, one resting on her elbow and the other brushing almost absently at her sleeve. It was the lady elf again, and she smiled apologetically up at Fay.

“You had a bit of dust there,” the lady elf said. She let go of Fay's arm after another few brushes. “And you have dust… well, everywhere else. Farm stock, aren't you?”

Fay's face warmed up again. “Only one in my hamlet,” she answered gruffly. “Sent me here to learn not to torch things.”

She didn't have a plan. She hadn't expected to have to actively fend off anyone's attention; she didn't know what to say, what to pretend to be to make everybody leave her alone. She just wanted to learn enough that the school would give her whatever papers she needed to convince the folks back home that she wasn't a menace anymore. She wasn't interested in making friends with any mage.

The elves weren't put off. If anything they laughed and grinned like she was the most amusing thing on two legs, and that was a lot worse. Still blushing furiously, Fay turned her attention back to the provost and her long, boring speech about the wonders of magic and the responsibility that came with wielding it.

Insanity, all of it. Did they _know_ how deadly magic could be? It seemed to Fay that none of these pretty mages - much less any of these wide-eyed students, human and elf alike - had ever actually dabbled in anything more dangerous than a few fancy light shows. If they had done what Fay had done--

Her throat squeezed in on itself again. This time Fay forced herself to be calm and swallow past the lump that wasn't physically there to begin with. It served her right. She might as well get used to suffering quietly through all these panic attacks.

Fingers brushed her back again, bringing another little scrap of calm with them - and then Provost Mayweather was walking towards the door with everyone else in tow, and Fay had an excuse to jerk away from the friendly touch without it being too obvious that it was the touch itself that she fled.

“Now,” the provost was saying by the time Fay reached the door, “the majority of you will have already settled the matter of your housing within the city. However, those of you without the means to pay for your lodging will be given apartments within the college itself. These will consist of a bedroom, a small workroom, and a bathroom. Everything else you should need can be found within the rest of the college, or else it may be purchased within the city.”

Fay would have an apartment in the school. She was surprised the bathroom would be included - and apparently as its own room. Even the poorest parts of Dalaran already sounded more polished than her cozy little farm.

The group followed the provost down a short, wide hallway. The walls on either side were lined with portraits that seemed almost to shimmer, and every so often they would pass carvings from white stone that were so graceful and formless that they reminded Fay of milk being poured into a glass - though she'd never seen milk come in such a clean, snowy color as the statues. Certainly she'd never seen milk spiral upwards, or loop about itself like a pair of snakes in a tapestry, or hover in midair as some of the smaller carvings did.

Fay caught herself staring and forced her eyes downward as she followed the others. This was just more magic, and she didn't need to be wondering at anything crafted with magic. She had gotten into enough trouble without even realizing she _had_ magic; she refused to think about what would happen if she let herself be careless with it now that she did know.

And surely there was nothing magical about the sprawling purple rug she walked across, embroidered as it was with absurdly delicate gold and silver threadwork. She had seen the women back home weave delicate patterns, too. Maybe not with whatever fine materials had been used for this rug (it looked almost like velvet, but even magi couldn't be that wasteful,) but still…

She felt someone close in from behind an instant before one of the elves leaned down and murmured, “That's crushed velvet, if you're wondering. My family has rugs like this all over the estate. They're wonderful on bare feet.”

Fay leaned away and didn't let herself look up to gawk at whichever elf had spoken. Figured the elves would all be snooty noble-folk. It must be nice to have the money to afford so much wanton luxury.

…That rug did look awfully soft, though.

“Now then,” the provost said, and Fay only barely stopped in time to keep from plowing into the students in front of her as the group halted again, this time before a much larger pair of doors made from some rich, red-hued wood and carved with patterns so lovely they nearly hurt to look at.

Ahead, the provost smiled at all of them - a genial, lifeless smile that wasn't at all as convincing as the elf-prince’s had been - and said, “It's time you all saw your new home.”

The doors must have been spelled to open at that, because open they did, swinging outward gracefully and letting the sunlight outside pour in. Fay raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare as the other students sent up a swell of hushed, awed sound. She hadn't thought it was that dark inside, not with so many magic lamps and lights…

A hand towed her forward by her elbow, giving Fay only just enough time to grab her little bag again as the same elf said, “Come on, don't fall behind now. Let's go see this ‘center of magic’.”

Elves, she decided as she stumbled half-blindly beside him, were an absurdly pushy people and could do to learn some proper human manners. And then she tripped over the threshold, and her irritation was lost for a moment as her elvish tormentor steadied her before she could fall flat on her face.

She blinked owlishly as the sun spots in her eyes slowly cleared away. A moment later she could finally see the city, and she couldn't stop the little gasp that erupted from her at the sight of it.

She saw first the pale, gleaming stonework all around - great towering buildings, walkways that flowed like carved rivers, not-too-distant spires tipped with great violet roofs like teardrops or unblossomed buds. For a moment, she thought it all must be white stone; then, as her eyes became gradually more adjusted to the daylight, she realized everything was built instead in shades of rose-gold, with the walkways patterned in stones that deepened all the way to a rich mahogany color. Only the grout seemed truly white - and even then, it was a pinkish, timeworn white.

Greenery and woodwork broke up the scenery and kept it from seeming like a fortress of pretty rock. Fences lined the majority of the properties along the walkways; their posts were wrought from a pale wood Fay couldn't name off the top of her head, tipped with violet crystals in gold settings and carved by hand or magic to have the same flowing look as the walkways. Grass grew across every inch of the ground left untouched by pavement stones and patios, and trees - trimmed in fabric shapes or pruned for simple neatness, many of them species Fay had never seen before and could not name - grew wherever the grassy patches were large enough to allow for it. Flowers gave a burst of added color to the shades of green; explosions of orange and red and gold marked great patches of long, lily-like flowers whose color patterns put Fay in mind of the snarling dragons in her childhood storybooks, while smaller flowers with white and pale blue petals provided a gentle contrast to their fiery neighbors and seemed to sway to their own gentle breezes even when the air was utterly still.

Birds flocked about the rooftops of the buildings, small and feathered in the same brilliant blues and homey browns as the little robins and jays back home - but they sang more sweetly here, Fay thought. Their chirps and calls rang out more fearlessly, more clearly than those of the hamlet birds who lived in fear of ravens and barn cats.

And the people--! Not just humans and elves, but a few gnomes and even a dwarf wandered the streets around the gaggle of new students, all wearing clothes that seemed soft and faintly shimmery to Fay's eyes. Some carried staffs or books or packages; one elf, a man dressed in luxurious robes, passed near the group with his eyes glued to a large book that he carried in both hands. Beside him floated a stack of other books, carried along by magic that gave off an effervescent blue light and a slight chiming noise.

She was staring openly at it all, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it, but so were the other human students as the group continued to follow the provost through the streets. More than once Fay tried to look away, and not be taken in by what she knew had not been made by honest work with hammer and sweat. She failed; whatever and whoever had created all this had made a paradise of rock and wood.

“Silvermoon is prettier.”

Fay jumped and turned to glare indignantly at the redheaded elf who still towed her along. The cheeky brat grinned and winked back at her; she could swear she saw one long ear tip switch like a cat's.

“That building over there,” the redhead said, seeking distraction and succeeding as Fay turned her glare off him to look in the direction that he pointed. “With the sign that has a streaming teacup painted on both sides?” Fay nodded; she saw it. “See how smooth it is? It's stuccoed.”

Fay frowned. Stuccoed? “What's stucco?” she asked, turning to look again at the elf.

Behind them there was the sound of coins changing hands.

The redhead grinned again. “It's a type of plaster used to reinforce and color wood- and stonework. I'd say the café over there isn't built from the same stones as those spires towering over the city. Maybe none of the smaller buildings are.”

Fay tilted her head, intrigued in spite of herself, and turned to eye the café again. Stucco. She wondered if any of the buildings back home had it, or if it was some expensive material commonfolk couldn't generally afford.

“Does Silvermoon not have stuccoed buildings?” She asked, raising an eyebrow at the elf. Out here there was enough bustle to hide their conversation - and the provost didn't seem to be speaking anymore, to boot.

The elf grinned, and Fay thought she heard somebody else snort. “It does,” he said, “it does - but our stucco work is more uniform, and the stucco we use is the color of fresh milk, not dusty rose petals.”

Well, then, Silvermoon certainly didn't sound prettier at all. She thought as much, but it would be horrendously rude to say as much out loud - and might earn her enemies she didn't need to deal with - so instead she nodded and made a quiet, noncommittal little sound in her throat.

The redhead laughed and let the subject drop. Fay waited for a five-count, then firmly closed the stucco conversation by saying, “You know - you haven't introduced yourself, yet. Back home the boys at least give their names before they start dragging girls about.”

The redhead grinned again; this time Fay saw the sharpness of his canines before he started speaking, and wondered if that was something unique to him - or if all elves had a set of delicate little fangs.

“Caesan Roseflame,” the redhead said, placing the fingertips of his free hand against his chest with an unnecessary flourish. “Middle son of House Roseflame - renowned craftsmen and enchanters.”

“Enchanters?” Fay desperately hoped he meant anything other than the enchanters she thought of - those were scantily clad characters in the romance novels littering her hamlet, set apart from succubi only because they were human and out for coin more than sex.

Caesan seemed to understand her confusion, because his expression took on a teasing edge as he said, “We create and apply protective wards and spells to things folk want protected. Trinkets, books, buildings… you get the idea, don't you?”

Fay nodded. Noble because they were useful; that could be said of a lot of the more famous families in Lordaeron, too, though those were more famous as merchants or bookmakers or the houses of high-ranking military men.

Bodies jostled her, startling Fay from her thoughts and drawing a sharp squeak from her in response. Caesan laughed again as his three friends crowded around them.

“You're hogging the farm girl,” the lady-elf informed Caesan. Her voice was pert and a little petulant. “I noticed her first; by all rights I should be the one towing her about.”

“I can walk on my own,” Fay put in.

“I'm being gentlemanly!” Caesan retorted, patting Fay's elbow with his free hand. “She's from a _hamlet,_ Ine’thaes. She might be overwhelmed!”

“You're both bothering her.” That was the blond male, speaking up for the first time and deftly - though not incredibly gently - prying Fay out from between Caesan and Ine’thaes.

“Thank you,” Fay mumbled. The blond patted her shoulder but said nothing more.

They continued on, with Fay sticking close to the blond male - who eventually identified himself as Vy’daras Daysprinter, and twin brother to Ine’thaes. Caesan and Ine’thaes didn't seem terribly perturbed by the wall Fay had made of Vy’daras, and happily chatted with each other, Vy’daras, and the brunet elf as though Fay wasn't there at all - except for the occasional comment lobbed her direction. Those were usually one-offs, designed, she thought, to throw her off more than anything else. At the very least, the only one of the elves who didn't laugh each time she flinched or stumbled over her words was Vy’daras… and even he cracked a grin more often than not.

Fay's eyes traveled between her erstwhile companions, the city… and the human students ahead of them, some of whom occasionally glanced back at Fay's group with expressions that ranged from curious to snide.

Her stomach dropped. Somehow, despite her best efforts to remain unnoticed, she'd managed to make herself stand out in a way that was clearly already beginning to ruffle a few feathers. She wondered if it was too much to hope that settling into the routines at the College and keeping her head down thereafter would be enough to smooth everyone's figurative plumage.

One of the young men up ahead turned to look back at her, then at the elves beside her, then back at Fay to sneer before turning away again.

Great. Fay hunched her shoulders and drew closer to Vy’daras without thinking. He patted her shoulder again, but said nothing to her.

She appreciated his silence. She couldn't be sure how sharp anyone's hearing was just yet; it would only make things worse if Vy’daras or one of his fellows made a comment in her favor and was overheard by one of the human students ahead.

Fay had more or less grown used to the architecture in Dalaran by the time they finally reached the College, and so its great, elegant towers and gleaming walls didn't astound her quite so thoroughly. They were still breathtakingly beautiful, though - especially up close, where she could see the walls were carved to display whole scenes of magi performing fantastic feats.

And beyond the walls--!

The campus grounds opened out into a wide courtyard whose winding pathways were all but dominated by the emerald grass and jewel-toned flowers that grew in great bursts all around them. Massive trees - trees that had to be older than Fay's _hamlet,_ even if magic had been used to make them grow so tall - towered here and there, often in clusters of three to seven. Fay found herself staring longingly at one of the bigger clusters; it looked secure and secret, at least more so than the open courtyard.

The courtyard was like some hidden garden, taken straight from the stories her mother and father had told her as a little girl. She might do a lot of reading out here.

Maybe even some sketching.

The provost was speaking at them again, but Fay ignored her in favor of watching the older students and instructors who populated the courtyard and watched the group of new students with open interest. These whispered amongst each other with small smiles and understated gestures, or else watched silently as they went about their business.

One man stood with his arms folded, eyeing the group with a perfectly blank expression. Fay didn't let her gaze linger on him, for fear he'd feel her staring and turn his attention on her.

An elbow caught her in the side, and once again Vy’daras was ungentle enough that she was left aching when he pulled his arm back to his side.

“Provost Mayweather is going to take everyone staying at the school to their apartments,” the elf murmured. He didn't say anything else, but the half-lidded glance he shot her gleamed with an unspoken question.

Fay felt herself deflate slightly. “Guess I should follow her, then,” she said, pulling her bag closer to herself and trotting off after the provost and the handful of students still following her. The rest seemed to have been handed off to another instructor, and remained behind in the courtyard as Fay's new group followed the provost inside through another large, elegantly detailed wooden door.

The hallways of the school were much less intimidating than the hallway that had led them out into the city. These were more… bookish, Fay thought. More practical, more suited for study than flair. There were alcoves furnished for quiet study, and the floors were carpeted rather than laid with lacquered wood and fine rugs. Banners and tapestries hung along the walls, depicting arcane symbols and images of impossible lands and creatures. There were even some stretches where the walls had been replaced with great shelves loaded with books that looked too heavy for one person to lift unassisted.

She liked these hallways. They were warm and cozy - in multiple senses of each word.

“The student living quarters are located on the second, third, and fourth floors of this wing,” Provost Mayweather said as they climbed a wide, lovely staircase - wrought from wood and iron, much to Fay's private glee. “Your apartments, specifically, are all situated on the fourth floor. I expect you'll all plan your daily routines accordingly; there will be no teleportation magic to save you from your own tardiness.”

Fay's ears twitched at that. A challenge? A challenge involving physical activity? Fay might not be a strong young woman, but she could certainly show these preening cityfolk a thing or two about getting around quickly. A few flights of stairs were nothing compared to chasing dogs and goats and sheep and cattle all over the hamlet.

Up and up they climbed, and to Fay's quiet amusement she and the provost were the only two of their group of six who were not out of breath by the time they reached the fourth floor and were divvied up among the apartments set aside for them.

Fay had one of the inside-wall apartments - there were no windows in her rooms, only a tapestry and a couple of paintings. The sconces were set so that she could light them by conventional means, and when she did (with hands that shook from what she was sure was only a lack of blood sugar) the light they cast was softer than the lighting in the entry hall had been.

The walls were white and looked stuccoed; the floors in her bedroom and little study were plush with a deep, reddish violet carpet, while the bathroom was floored with white and rosy tiles. The bed was large enough to roll about in, a little bit, with a suitably firm mattress, soft blankets and sheets, and three fluffy pillows. There was a little night table beside the bed; its single drawer was stocked with a velvet bag full of long, perfumed sticks, as well as a second matchbook and a stand that seemed built to hold one perfumed stick at a time.

The study was comprised of a little bookshelf - stocked for now with only a couple of books, one of them containing maps and another detailing a brief history of Dalaran - as well as a small desk and chair. The desk’s drawers were filled with parchment, quills, inks, and a plain little golden inkwell. The sconces here cast a more brilliant light about the room than those in her bedroom - nearly bright enough to rival the daylight outside.

The single tapestry in the apartment was hung on the wall facing the desk, so that when she sat down to work she could look up at something lovelier than dusty books and her own handwriting.

The creature depicted upon the tapestry was unlike anything she had ever seen or dreamed of - not quite a bird and not quite a snake, it flared great, feathered bat wings in flight and stared down at her with a reptilian, hawk-beaked face brimming with the intelligence of ravens and magpies. The creature’s flame-colored scales and plumage stood out in stark relief against the violet backdrop of the tapestry; so, too, did its sky-blue eyes stand out against the brilliant gold of its head.

With shaking fingers, Fay reached out and traced the lines of the woven creature’s serpentine body. A soft, furtive smile flickered across her lips as tears began to well up in her eyes.

What in the world had she gotten herself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~"SO MUCH ROOM FOR ADVENTURE," Fay cries as she falls victim to her fifty-seventh consecutive panic attack.~~


	3. Sources

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super huge compared to the first two. Whoops!
> 
> The map and locations of the ley lines are based on the fantastic map by yung-rage over on tumblr. When I've got the spoons for it, with their permission, I'll try to add the actual map as an illustration of sorts for this chapter.

Classes began the following morning - something the majority of Fay's new classmates seemed to have forgotten, because she was one of the few new students to be found scurrying across the campus a little after sunrise, stumbling slightly in the student robes and boots she had found in her wardrobe the night before. They weren't ill-fitting - in fact, they settled about her as though they had been tailored specifically for her, which made her wonder whether they were bespelled to fit whoever wore them. But the soft, thin-seeming robes were multi-layered and in fact heavier than the cotton dresses she wore at home - almost heavier than the woolen winter dresses - and the boots had the slightest little heels to them, when her shoes and boots back home were worn out hand-me-downs whose heels had either never been raised or else been worn down ages before she started wearing them.

Still… it would do. And she doubted her instructors would excuse tardiness on her first day due to falling over in magic-laden clothes and heeled boots, so she gathered her robes the way she might gather skirts to go chasing after chickens and set out for the Introduction to Magicks lecture hall at a brisk trot. Any faster, and she worried she really _would_ send herself tumbling across the ground.

She didn't run very often - for the most part, she had learned how to keep up with the many beasts of her hamlet in slow strides or sudden bursts of movement, and those she couldn't outpace had either learned to behave for her or become predictable over the years that she had known them. This pace she set now was the swiftest she generally went over great distances, and it showed.

Her boots clopped hard against the pavement as she went; her whole body went into each stride, strong and fluid for as long as she remained in motion. Her knees and ankles she allowed to bend more than she had noticed others did. It made her gait smoother, and lessened the impact on her joints - but it was also the primary cause of her hoof-like footfall as she crossed the campus.

Actually, when she thought about it - it was easy to imagine herself as running on hind’s feet, cloven-hooved and deer-legged and stronger, swifter than she knew herself to be.

It was a nice daydream, anyway. Something to occupy her until she reached the right hallway, and trotted herself to a stop out of hard-learned habit. _Don't run indoors._ So very many authority figures had had to fight to get the simple order to resonate with Fay; she had always been an excitable, mischievous little sprite…

She swiped at her eyes before the stinging in them could turn to tears. She was _not_ going to walk into her first class, on her first day here, with red eyes and swollen lips and snot and drool everywhere. Absolutely not.

“Here, love, use this.” A white silk hanky suddenly dangled in front of her face, clutched between a set of fingers tipped in long, glittering violet nails.

Fay started, then snapped her head up to look into the eyes of the one who had caught her acting so… feeble.

It was one of the elves from yesterday, the blonde woman. Fay scrambled for a name and came up blank. Ina… something. Maybe.

“It's just… you don't want to leave streaks on your robe sleeves,” the woman said, dabbing at Fay's eyes for herself once it became clear that Fay wasn't going to take the handkerchief from her.

“Thanks,” Fay mumbled.

The woman smiled, then deftly folded her handkerchief up into a neat little triangle and handed it to Fay. “A gift - to make up for the way I behaved yesterday,” she explained. “Thinking about it last night, it occurred to me that we all acted rather presumptuously, dragging you around and arguing over you as though you were some charming new pet.”

“Uhm… it's alright,” Fay said, hesitantly accepting the gift. It was just as soft between her fingers as it had felt on her cheeks. She tucked it quickly into an inside pocket on her robes - to make sure it was safe, or so she told herself. “I probably didn't come across very polite, either.”

“Oh, but you did!” The woman blinked and leaned back a bit, plainly surprised. “That's what I thought was so impressive. All that time during the prince’s speech, and only one comment - it was masterful, really!”

Fay blinked. Had she been that obviously critical of the elf prince yesterday? She'd thought she'd been more unreadable than that; she knew she tended to have awfully subtle facial expressions when listening, and she thought she knew what it felt like when she wasn't making any exaggerated faces…

“Thanks?” she offered after a moment.

The elf woman eyed her quietly, frowning a little to herself as though Fay hadn't at all given her the correct response.

“Don't you know what you did yesterday?” she finally asked.

Fay started to respond, but was distracted by a sudden movement in the corner of her eye.

Other students were approaching the hall - a knot of five young men, all of them looking cleaner than Fay was sure she'd ever been in all her life and more comfortable in this mage-school than Fay was sure she would ever feel.

She recognized one of them right away: One of the blonds, one with dark eyes and freckles dusted across his cheeks, was the boy who'd turned to sneer at her the day before when he'd seen her speaking with the elves. He was sneering again, eyes locked on Fay as he leaned in and muttered something to his friends.

“Are you heading to Conjurations?” the lady-elf asked, still looking at Fay as though she were some interesting new puzzle to take apart. “My friend Caesan should already be there. Perhaps we can sit together?”

“No!” Fay cried, whirling around to face the lady-elf again and nearly tripping over her heeled shoes.

The lady-elf drew back a bit, long eyebrows raising delicately in surprise.

Guilt gnawed at Fay - it wasn't the lady-elf’s fault that nobody else seemed to approve of humans and elves talking together - and so in a gentler voice she said, “No, I'm… I have Introduction to Magicks right now. I don't know if we’ll have any classes together, really,” she added apologetically. “Farm stock, remember? I didn't get raised with magic at all, so I'll probably be stuck in all the beginner classes.”

“Oh.” The lady-elf laughed a bit, and even that was a graceful, ladylike sound. “I wouldn't worry about that, dear. True, you're not as inundated as we are, but you never know when you might stun your professors and find yourself bumped into more advanced studies. I imagine you'll do beautifully with summoning magic,” she said, placing a gentle hand on Fay's shoulder and smiling brilliantly. “You seem the right sort for it.”

“…Right.” Fay smiled back, then pulled away and said, “I should get going. I don't wanna be late on my first day.”

“No, true.” The lady-elf laughed again and waved her off. “Go introduce yourself to magic - and then hurry and get yourself put into some advanced courses with us!”

And with that, the lady-elf turned and swept gracefully away, her robes floating about her as though they were made from water as she deftly made her way between the students up ahead.

Fay watched her leave, and for a moment she considered chasing after her - maybe she could use some sort of invisibility magic to hide Fay, or maybe the professors at the college would think Fay was being ambitious by sneaking into a more advanced class than the one she was scheduled to have. So far the lady-elf and her friends were the only people who had been genuinely nice to Fay, even if it _did_ come in the form of what felt like the kind of patronizing fondness old ladies gave to old, fat cats. She would much rather be patronized than sneered at…

She debated for a moment longer… and then turned and stalked off towards her proper class, setting her jaw and squaring her shoulders as she went. She might be an outsider here, poor and farm-bred and probably permanently covered in dirt, and she might be every bit as dangerous as a half-empty bottle of moonshine with embers smoldering right next to it, but she wasn't as stupid as she looked, and she wasn't any kind of coward. Some sneering prat with fancy robes could never compare to an entire town full of people she knew and cared about turning on her for almost burning one of them to death, anyway.

And… and she had to do this right. She didn't know anything about magic except what she had grown up hearing in scary stories and hard-voiced warnings, and none of those had been enough to prepare her for the devastation she had unleashed, or the ease with which she'd done it. She'd definitely never heard of spellcasting that felt like the unraveling of a hard knot in the base of her throat.

If the stories were all wrong, then she didn't know anything at all about magic. And if she didn't know anything about magic, it didn't strike her as an incredibly smart idea to try to sneak into advanced classes where she might have to actually _cast_ something. If anything, she figured that was the quickest way to burn down half the school.

She had to learn to be better. She had to learn to control the magic she was burdened with, so that nobody else ever had to be afraid that she might hurt them - even if _she_ spent the rest of her life terrified of doing exactly that. And if she was going to learn to control herself, she had to start from scratch - just like walking, but with higher stakes.

She had to learn to be better, and no preening, stupid, lordling boy or his idiot friends could stand in the way of that.

Her thoughts continued to spin around themselves as she threaded her way through the crowded hall and finally found her classroom - only to come to a screeching halt along with the rest of her the moment she reached the door.

Someone bumped into her shoulder as they passed, but she barely noticed and didn't care at all. The lump was back in her throat, hard and big enough that even swallowing around it hurt, and her hands were shaking hard and her arms felt like twin chunks of ice filled to her body at the shoulders as she stared through the door and into the room beyond.

This was where it became real. This was the last time she could pretend that she was just another normal, lowly peasant girl dragged off the farmlands as part of some sick joke played on her by all her neighbors - the last time she could pretend she was only a monster by accident, that the magic bursting from her seams was only an affliction to be cured rather than a state of being to endure until she could learn to control the worst of it.

Some of the other students were staring at her. She could feel their eyes. They were staring and her body felt like stone. She tried to move, truly she did, but no matter how hard or how desperately her mind screamed for her feet to propel her forward she remained rooted stubbornly in place, defiant as though she chose to stand stock-still when all she wanted was to run away and hide under the thick, soft blankets of the bed in her apartment.

 _Move!_ she shrieked in her own mind. _Move, move, move, **MOVE!**_

She moved.

Slowly, feeling as mechanical as the motion of a windmill caught in the middle of a gale, she stepped inside the classroom and found her way to an empty seat near the back, feeling still the gazes of the others present boring into her from all sides well after she finally sat down. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her tongue felt thick and half-numbed in her mouth, but somehow she didn't seem to have set anybody on fire yet. She could still feel the knot in her throat; maybe, as long as she could hold that knot in place, that was the key to keeping herself under control. Swallow the knot, and swallow the killing magic that burned at the core of it.

The seating was different here than anything she might have expected: Three rows of long desks took up the majority of the available floorspace, with each row housing five desks. At each desk were set four chairs - armless and simple in design, yet still finer than the roughshod chairs and stools to which Fay was accustomed from around the hamlet. Even the benches of the courthouse weren't so nice - and while they were padded along the seats and backs like these chairs, the padding on the courthouse benches was old and so flat that it might as well not exist at all, while the padding on these classroom chairs was plush and vibrant purple. Yet again, Fay caught herself wondering just how much of her surroundings had been made with magic rather than with honest sweat and blood.

The room was gradually beginning to grow noisier and more crowded as more students filed into the room; even the newcomers, who could not have seen her freeze in the doorway or move so woodenly to this lovely seat at the back of the classroom, stopped and gave Fay second looks as they found their own seats.

Fay frowned and tried to focus on her hands instead of on her fellow students. She was trembling faintly, still, and she knew she was probably still ghostly pale, but surely that wasn't any reason on its own for _everybody_ to give her such odd, questioning looks, was it?

Swallowing hard again to make sure the knot was still in her throat, Fay chanced another look up at her classmates, glancing from face to face and trying not to let herself flinch away whenever someone caught her looking back at them. It took a moment, but eventually she realized what it must be that drew such an overabundance of attention to her.

With the exception of two boys who looked to be in their late teens, nearly all of Fay's new classmates were visibly quite young - certainly younger than Fay. One red-haired girl in particular was so small and so soft in her features that Fay thought she mustn't possibly be older than twelve, or _maybe_ thirteen, and all the others looked to run the gamut from fourteen to seventeen years. All were human, and unless Fay was missing someone - or unless someone was late to class - not one of them looked as though they'd hit their twenties yet, which meant that Fay was the oldest student in the room.

The oldest student in an introductory class to the existence of _magic itself._ In a school dedicated to creating magi.

The knot in her throat tightened up again, and this time Fay felt her stomach drop down to sit on the floor between her feet as she hunched in on herself and drew her hair over her shoulders to hide from all her younger classmates. At least her cheeks couldn't possibly be pale anymore, not when they were burning this intensely…

The chair beside her moved. Fay almost pretended not to notice, only to have any thought of giving her neighbor the cold shoulder crumble away an instant later.

“Hi,” her classmate said. It was a girl, one of the younger ones, and her voice was bright but hesitant - friendly and open, but almost as uncertain as Fay had felt all week.

_Dammit…_

Fay turned and smiled as brightly as she could manage, hoping to herself that she didn't look deranged or terrified as she said, “Hey.”

The girl sitting next to her was the little redhead, and up close Fay could see that she had wide, warm brown eyes and a pale dash of freckles across the bridge of her little button nose.

“My name is Rosanna,” the girl said. “My dad's here, too. He's studying conjuring,”she added, grinning as though she expected Fay to be thoroughly astounded.

“That's really neat,” Fay said, hoping she sounded suitably enthusiastic. Truthfully, the only thing she could think of was the story her Gran had once told her of a wicked old man who conjured great storms of hail and sleet to torment travelers on the road. But the stories had been wrong about other things, and had failed to mention some things entirely. Maybe Rosanna’s father was a different kind of conjurer - just like one of the elves yesterday had claimed to be a different kind of enchanter than the sort Fay was familiar with.

“What sort of things does your dad conjure?” Fay asked, and she was surprised to find that the question had come from a place of genuine curiosity.

Rosanna giggled, and by the look on her face she seemed to think Fay was kidding with her.

“You know, like cups and food and stuff,” the girl said. “Dad's really good at making mage-candies - he always used to bring home a bag when I was little.”

As if somehow she thought she wasn't little anymore.

“Are you gonna study conjuring, too?” Fay asked.

“Maybe,” Rosanna said, shrugging her shoulders. Then her eyes brightened and a huge grin spread across her face as she added, “I kinda wanna learn some fire spells, though. I saw a fire mage once - he was making animals and shapes in the air!”

As comfortable as Fay had begun to feel, the mention of _fire spells_ unraveled her all over again in the span of a single, stuttering heartbeat, and she had to work hard now to keep smiling as she said, “That sounds really incredible.”

Incredibly dangerous. Incredibly stupid. Was the man aware that he was playing with an instrument of death and destruction? Or was he as naïve as Rosanna when it came to something as bright and shiny as fire magic? Maybe he'd never accidentally burned someone. Maybe Rosanna hadn't even heard of such a thing.

Fay looked down at Rosanna, with her curly red hair and her bright, happy smile, and desperately hoped that she never had to learn the truth about fire magic.

Their conversation didn't have the chance to get grim, thankfully, because a few seconds later there was a sharp rapping sound from the front of the classroom, and it drew everyone's attention to a tall, willowy old human man dressed in dark, formal robes. He was wrinkly and bald, with a hooked beak for a nose and small eyes that were nearly lost beneath heavy folds of loose skin. He had his hands closed around a long, polished pointer stick; his knuckles were knobbly, and there was a brown liver spot across the back of his left hand that Fay found immensely distracting.

“Good morning,” the old man said, and his voice was suitably high and nasally for the way the rest of him looked, although it was surprisingly steady and resonant in spite of that.

Fay opened her mouth to return the greeting, only to stop herself at the absolute last second as she realized no one else was speaking.

“You may call me _Professor Arkasis,”_ the old man continued, apparently unbothered by the lack of response. He had an odd way of speaking, Fay thought: He overenunciated his words, and spoke a little too slow and a little too carefully even for somebody who was supposed to teach younger children and teens. It wasn't even patronizing in tone, and that was the strangest part of the whole thing. It just seemed as though this was how Professor Arkasis talked.

“In _this_ class,” Arkasis said, and Fay had to shake herself back to attention as he continued, “we shall cover the _history,_ _nature,_ and _fundamental laws_ of _magic_ \- among _other, related_ subjects.”

Fay closed her eyes and narrowly resisted groaning in dismay. Oh, Light, if this was what she would have to sit through for the entire year, maybe hard labor in a mine somewhere far away from civilization would have been the kinder of her options after all…

“Now,” Professor Arkasis said, clapping his hands smartly together. “Let us first begin with a brief overview of _what,_ precisely, magic _is._ Quills and parchment _out,_ if you please, there will be a _review_ at the end of class.”

And with that, he was off, and Fay was happy to see that at least she wasn't the only person in class who dove frantically for her book bag as the professor launched into a long, dry preamble about how magic was the lifeblood of the universe.

Fay had been homeschooled as a girl, and anything she knew that her family couldn't teach her had been gleaned from every book she could get her hands on, and from eavesdropping on more neighbors and travelers than any young woman had a right to have done. The downside to that was that she had never had to write down notes during a lecture in all her life, and so for the next half-hour, she was too busy desperately scribbling away at page after page of parchment paper to worry about much else beyond getting down as much information as she possibly could. She soon abandoned any attempt to jot down Arkasis’ lecture word for word; as slowly and clearly as the old professor spoke, she was still left with only just enough time to scratch down important-sounding words and short, fragmented bits of sentences that she would hopefully understand when she went to review her writing later on.

Her hands were ink-stained and her quill slick with her sweat by the time Arkasis finally closed his lecture, and when she at last returned the quill to her little brass inkwell, the outside edge of her hand was stiff and aching down onto the bones. She'd never had to write that much in one sitting in all her life; was this the _norm_ at the College?

 _“Now_ that we are all _clear,”_ Professor Arkasis said as the last of the students set their own quills aside, “why don't we _all_ do something a bit more _fun,_ hmm?”

Fay perked up at that, though she didn't stop rubbing at her poor hand as she listened. Something fun? She wondered what qualified as fun in the mind of a windy old coot like Professor Arkasis. Hopefully it didn't involve any more writing; she was worried her hand was going to fall off if she wasn't given the chance to let it rest for just a little while.

The professor smiled thinly, then turned and wove his way around his desk to pull a map down from where it had been rolled up above a black slate board.

Fay squinted, not immediately recognizing the map. She'd only ever seen the maps of the canton where her hamlet sat, and once, when she was small, she'd gotten a glimpse at the map of the entire Kingdom of Lordaeron - borrowed from a traveler her family had allowed to rest in their home for a few days. This map that Professor Arkasis unrolled for everyone was of finer make than any of those that Fay had grown up with, and showed a large continent that she had never seen before.

 _“This,”_ Arkasis said, turning again to face the class as he patted the map with one splayed hand, “is a map of the _Eastern Kingdoms_ \- though I'm sure you all _knew_ that already, yes?”

He chuckled, and half the class laughed with him. Fay forced a smile and resisted the urge to sink lower in her seat as she realized one of the laughing students was little Rosanna. At least the two older teenagers looked as uncomfortable as Fay felt…

“Now,” the professor continued, “one by one, _as you are called,_ I would like _each_ of you to come to the front of the class and _indicate_ on the map where it is you _hail_ from. When you _do,”_ he added, reaching into a pocket on the left hip of his robes, “I will hand you a _colored pin_ with which to _mark_ your place of _origin. Each_ of you will receive a _different color_ \- I do believe I should have enough for all of you,” he finished with a wink.

Fay watched as the first handful of students were chosen, studying them closely as they carefully parsed their homelands from the information supplied by the map and further elaborated upon by Professor Arkasis, who apparently had an encyclopedic wealth of knowledge regarding the Eastern Kingdoms. Her hope was that maybe somebody else here was at least from the same canton within Lordaerom, or perhaps a neighboring one, but that proved to be a fruitless thing to hope: Only one of the students called was even from the same _region,_ and they didn't even need Arkasis to help them find the exact spot on his big map where their town was located. They couldn't be near Fay’s home, anyway - they lived within a week's travel of Capital City. Fay's hamlet wouldn't be so poor if they were that close to the seat of Lordaeron’s government.

“Let me see,” Professor Arkasis said as the latest student returned to his seat. The old man's beady little eyes scanned the room again, looking for another student to call at random… until they fell at last on Fay.

Fay's stomach dropped to her feet again.

“You there, at the very back,” Arkasis said with a smile. “Thought I might miss you, hmm? Come to the front, if you would.”

Fay's knees shook as she stood up, and for a second her head swam as though it were a balloon filled with hot air as she stepped slowly around the corner of her desk and made her way to the front of the room, keeping her eyes carefully trained on the floor about ten paces ahead of her so that she wouldn't see if anybody started staring at her.

Arkasis gave her a hearty clap on the shoulder as she finally came to a stop beside him, and although the gesture was probably supposed to have been one of encouragement, the boniness of his hand turned it instead into a hard rap that left her shoulder stinging slightly even after he stopped and busied himself with fishing a colored pin from the little box in his hands.

“Now,” he said, placing a bright pink pin into her open palm, “are you _familiar_ with this map, miss…?”

“Fay, sir,” she said, hoping she spoke loudly enough for the class to hear. It was embarrassing to be told to speak up. “And I… I've, uh, only seen maps of my canton.”

 _“Only_ that?” Arkasis repeated, raising his nearly nonexistent eyebrows to his completely nonexistent hairline. “Do you know the _kingdom,_ then?”

“Lordaeron,” Fay answered, feeling her cheeks burn once more with embarrassment. “S… Southern Lordaeron, I think. I've only seen a map of the kingdom once, though, and it wasn't marked by the canton.”

“Very well,” Arkasis said. “I do _enjoy_ a challenge. What _canton_ are you _from,_ Miss Fay?”

“Brighthaven,” Fay responded. “I'm from the hamlet nearest to the River Arevass.”

 _“Brighthaven,”_ Professor Arkasis repeated, scratching at his chin as he turned to regard the map.

Fay looked, as well, and now she could truly admire the quality of the thing from up close. Not only were all the territories and kingdoms carefully marked and labeled, but so were the larger cities and outposts, as well as major land formations and travel routes. It took another moment to realize the thinner, dotted lines cutting up the kingdoms denoted canton lines, and that these, too, were labeled. Apparently, Brighthaven was…

 _“Here_ we are,” Arkasis said, tapping at a spot roughly halfway between Capital City and the northernmost tip of South Tide’s Run just at the same time that her eyes found it. _“Brighthaven._ Lovely. And you said you live near the _River Arevass?”_

“Right,” Fay said, pleased to have found Brighthaven as swiftly as the professor had.

Arkasis stopped and raised a hairless brow at her, and then slid his finger a bit to the right of the Arevass. Behind them, Fay heard one or two voices begin to snicker.

“No, wait,” Fay said, almost tripping over her words in her haste to get them out. “I mean, yes, I live near the River Arevass. Sorry.”

Arkasis smiled, and again Fay was struck with the impression that he was trying - unsuccessfully - to be warm and friendly with her as he said, “Now then, do you know _where_ your hamlet is in _relation_ to the Arevass?”

“Can I…?” Fay asked, gesturing to the map.

“Of _course,”_ Arkasis said, stepping to the side and waving her forward.

Fay stepped up to the map, looking hard at the meticulous sketch of the River Arevass as she readied her pin. It was near a bend in the river, she knew, far enough out that the winter flooding had never done them any serious damage…

She finally found the right spot, or a close approximation at the very least, and set her pin into the map with a steady push.

 _“Interesting,”_ Professor Arkasis said as she stepped away again. His beauty eyes were trained fast on her face, and there was a sparkle there that she hadn't noticed before, but that made her stomach knot up all over again now that she did. “Very _interesting,_ indeed. Thank you, Miss Fay.”

Fay nodded, clasping her hands in front of her belly and wringing her left hand with her right as she stepped away and gratefully returned to her seat. Her legs were like jelly when she sat down again, and the rest of the exercise passed her by in a blur as she fought to shake off the last of her nerves. She _hated_ going up in front of so many people, especially when it involved making a total ass of herself.

At least Rosanna didn't seem to be trying to make fun of her…

The last student sat down twenty minutes later, leaving Professor Arkasis standing alone beside a slightly more colorful map of the Eastern Kingdoms. With the exception of the tiniest gnome Fay had ever seen, most of the students were human, and hailed from either Stormwind or Lordaeron - but none of them lived closer than several weeks’ travel from Fay's backwater little hamlet. All five of the other Lordaeron natives lived within a few days of the capital; two of them, the two oldest students after Fay, had even grown up together in the same town.

Fay was all alone, just as all alone as the tiny gnome boy. Logically speaking, she'd been alone since she left the hamlet… and yet, somehow, this was the first time she'd really felt the sting of it.

Her moping thoughts had begun to turn towards her elf friends and whether they felt half this lonely when Professor Arkasis interrupted her with a cough and another sharp clap.

“Now that we all know _where_ we come from,” Arkasis said, “why don't we all find out _what_ we come from, hmm?”

Fay frowned. _What_ they came from? Was Professor Arkasis trying to be poetic, or was this the opener to some rambling lecture that tried to make magic out to be as natural as sunlight or water?

Looking around the room, she could see most of her classmates frowning, too, and trading confused looks and hurried whispers with each other. That was encouraging, at least: It meant she wasn't the only one flailing about, this time.

Professor Arkasis let everybody wonder for a moment, smiling secretively to himself as he watched his students try to puzzle out his meaning, only for each one to eventually give up in frustration. Once most of the heads in the room had turned back to him, his smile split into a wide grin, and he turned with a great sweep of his robes and waved one knobbly hand across the surface of the map, speaking as he did a word - or several - in a language Fay didn't understand.

Gleaming blue light burst from his fingertips, and once again Fay was only one of a triple handful of voices raised in awe as that light raced across the parchment like trickles of water, spider-webbing in all directions across the Eastern Kingdoms, gathering in brilliant pools in several places and bleeding out into hair-thin tendrils in others.

Once the lights had finally settled into place, Professor Arkasis turned again to face the class, still beaming like a happy child. Behind him, the map had taken on the look of a patch of pale skin, with the blue lines looking a bit like the veins Fay could trace in the backs of her hands and the insides of her wrists.

 _“These,”_ Arkasis said when the noise had died down, “are called _ley lines._ Think of your veins, if you will - how they carry your _lifeblood._ Ley lines--”

He stopped, frowning heavily, and tutted at his students.

“You should be writing this down,” he informed them after a moment of awkward silence.

Papers quite literally flew from desktops as everyone dove for their parchment and quills. Fay nearly lost half of her notes trying to find a blank sheet large enough to add a sketchy version of the map and its ley lines.

“Now then,” Arkasis continued. _“Ley lines_ are, functionally speaking, a sort of _circulatory system_ for the _magic_ of the world. Just as your _veins_ carry blood throughout your body, _ley lines_ carry magic throughout all of Azeroth.”

Fay paused in her sketching long enough to scratch down _ley lines are veins - magic is blood,_ then returned to scribbling down her rough estimation of the western shores of Lordaeron.

 _“Later,_ we will discuss the _origins_ of these lines, as well as their many _uses,”_ Arkasis continued. “For _now,_ however, we shall take a brief look at the _effects_ ley energies have upon their surroundings.

“Just as your _veins_ feed blood into all parts of your body, so too do _ley lines_ feed magic into the environs through which they pass. Water is an excellent _conductor_ for these raw, magical energies, and it is therefore by the _consumption_ of magically tainted waters that living creatures are most commonly _exposed_ to raw magic.”

He gestured again to the map, and although this time the motion was purely demonstrative, it was enough to tear Fay's attention again from her sketch and glue her eyes back to the map.

“By water, the beasts and crops we gather become laden with untapped magic,” Arkasis said. “Though each creature and plant possesses only a fraction of a fraction of the necessary quantity to become transformed by this magic, _we_ consume enough of beast and crop and tainted water all to gather sufficient magical energies within ourselves, and this is quite often the reason why so many magi are born to non-magical families.”

Fay looked down and jotted down a few more hasty notes… and then stopped as she became aware of eyes boring into her again.

Professor Arkasis was smiling at her when she looked up again, and several of her classmates had followed his gaze and were now staring at her openly.

“What--?” Fay squeaked. Someone snickered to her right.

“Miss Fay,” Professor Arkasis said, his voice kind but mischievous in tone. “I wonder - would you mind telling us a bit about your hamlet? Are there any others there with magic, that you know of?”

“No, sir,” Fay said, struggling to keep the horror from her voice. “Nobody's magic, where I'm from. We… well…”

“Yes?” Arkasis urged, leaning forward a bit in clear interest.

“W-Well,” Fay stammered, “we… we're just farmers, sir. I mean, there's a tailor and a cobbler married to each other, and there's a few guards and the judge, but we… we just… grow food. We don't really need magic, so none of us uses any, and none of us has any in the first place.”

She couldn't tell him about how her neighbors and family hated magic - she couldn't tell anyone here. It was bad enough that everyone seemed to think she was a laughingstock; she refused to bring any prejudice down on her hamlet, too, no matter how much it had stung to be chased from her own home.

 _“Us?”_ Arkasis repeated with a chuckle. “My dear, _you_ very clearly have your fair share of magic. If you _didn't,_ you would not be _here,_ as a student of the College of Dalaran.”

“Well… w-- I meant, uh, none of us… until I turned out… to have some,” Fay mumbled, turning an even brighter shade of red as the class giggled around her again. “Sir.”

“Ah, of course,” Professor Arkasis said with a slow, sage nod. “Now I understand. In return,” he added, sweeping an arm towards the map again, “I think I should help _you_ understand how it is that you came to _possess_ any magic at all - or, at least, I can give you a place to _start.”_

Fay frowned again and looked hard at the map, wondering how it had anything at all to do with her current status as the scourge of the River Arevass. All she could see were brilliant blue lines and a scattering of brightly colored pins - although she couldn't seem to see hers, now that she was so far away again…

“I _assume_ you must be having _trouble_ finding your pin,” Arkasis said after a moment.

At Fay's nod, he turned and pointed to a spot where the blue lines ran the thickest and most brilliant - towards the largest gathering of ley lines in all of Lordaeron, from the looks of things.

As Fay watched, the professor reached through his own conjured lights and plucked a pin from beneath them - a bright pink pin.

Her pin.

“You _see,_ my dear,” Arkasis said, turning to show the pin to all the class, “your little hamlet sits atop a _powerful_ gathering of _ley energies._ Everything you and your neighbors _eat,_ everything you _drink_ and _wear_ and craft your _tools_ from will have been touched by these energies - _saturated,_ I should think.”

Fay's mouth went dry; a soft thrumming started in her ears, louder and more intense by the moment as Professor Arkasis continued, “I have no doubt that _everyone_ in your hamlet possesses _some_ small amount of magic within their veins by _this_ point. Somehow,” he said, turning to put the pin back into place as the faint pulse in Fay's ears became a steady pounding, _“you_ were the first and thus far _only_ one to manifest _true power_ from that saturation.”

The classroom had grown dark and dim around her, and the blood rushing in her ears had stirred up a steady, roaring wave of noise that all but drowned out the professor as he continued on, addressing the class at large now as he said, “Though it is not _always_ the case, of course, it _has_ often been observed that those from _non-magical_ families who _exhibit_ magical abilities tend to _hail_ from locations wherein there is a significant level of _ambient_ ley energies. On the other hand - Master Roderic, _you_ are the son of a _prolific_ family of magi, are you not?”

The lecture continued on, but Fay lost the rest of it in a swirl of sound and grayscale motion. Ley lines. Ley magic - magic in the water, poisoning their crops, tainting their beasts, magic sticking in the fibers of their clothes and seething in the wood- and metalworks they wrought, magic hiding in the stones and soil and choking the air around them…

They hated magic. They feared it, all of them - it was unnatural, inhuman, foul and tricky and poisonous to the ones who wielded it and poisonous to the land and living things it saturated and it had been _everywhere_ all along--

_\--It was everywhere, all at once: Heat and light and sound, a single, snapping moment of glory and rage and terror blending into a burst of golden, soothing warmth - and then it ended, and the warmth and glory were shattered by a blood-curdling scream--_

A hand closed over her own, and Fay yelped and nearly fell from her chair as she scrambled to her feet, heart hammering a wild tattoo in her chest.

“Calmly, now, miss Fay,” Arkasis said, raising his hands as though to soothe some beast about to rampage. “Let us be _calm_ about all this, now. We don't want to have any _accidents,_ do we?”

Fay shook her head mutely and clutched her arms tightly about herself. She could feel every muscle in her body trembling hard, and every breath dragged at her lungs like barbed wire, but there were _people_ about, people who hadn't done anything to her and didn't even know the danger they were in just by being near her, people who didn't deserve to be hurt just for being too close at hand…

“There, that's it,” Arkasis said, moving slowly closer until he could place his bony hands on her shoulders. His tone was different now, slow and soothing in spite of the continued overemphasis. _“NothingEverything_ is alright.”

Fay could only shake her head again, but she let him steer her back into her chair without resistance. She couldn't make herself say anything - couldn't decide which of the thoughts chasing each other in circles about her brain she should try to vocalize first. It was all she could do to keep herself together enough that her magic wouldn't snap loose again.

Her eyes roamed across the room as she fought to breathe, and only now did she realize that it was empty - the other students had all disappeared, leaving Fay and Professor Arkasis alone.

“Is… is class over?” Fay asked. Her voice was small and soft in her own ears.

“It is indeed,” Arkasis said, smiling again and patting her shoulder as he stood beside her. “I'm _surprised_ you didn't notice _sooner_ \- though you _do_ seem rather _overwhelmed._ I imagine this is the _first_ time that you've been given a _reason_ as to why _you_ possess magic when your _neighbors and family_ do not.”

“Yeah,” Fay mumbled.

“It can be a bit _much_ to take in, at first.” Arkasis patted her shoulder again. “But you have been _blessed_ with a truly _extraordinary_ gift, miss Fay - you, above _all others_ in your hamlet. You have been given _magic._ Surely that's something worth _celebrating,_ yes?”

Fay went cold, and a sudden, awful stillness settled over her as she turned to stare at Arkasis. Blessed? _Blessed?_ Did he really think this was a blessing? How many people had he hurt? How many had he _killed?_ Did he care? Would he care if he knew what _she_ had already done with this magic he said she was _blessed_ with?

“I…” Fay choked on the sudden dryness of her throat, and shoved herself to her feet again as the cold feeling spread to her fingertips. “I think I'm going to be late to my next class. Sir. Sorry.”

“Of _course,”_ Arkasis said, stepping back to allow her to gather her book bag from the floor. “I shall see you _tomorrow_ then, miss Fay.”

The iciness in her fingertips turned warm. 

“Yep,” Fay said, flinging her stationary into her bag as swiftly as she could without spilling ink everywhere, then slinging the strap over her shoulder as she turned to smile stiffly at the professor. “Good morning, Professor.”

“Good morning,” Arkasis answered, but Fay was already on her way out the door before he could say another word.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~Look self-insert fics are all about self-love and if you think somebody who writes snuff for fun doesn't need A LOT of self-love you are exceptionally optimistic.~~
> 
> THIS IS THE ONLY FLUFF YOU'RE GETTING THIS YEAR.


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